BOSTON (AP) — The National Football League players union and Harvard University are teaming up for a $100 million research project aimed at treating and preventing health problems plaguing former NFL players.

Researchers across disciplines will look at everything from brain trauma, torn ligaments, and arthritic joints, to the long-term effects of acute pain and chronic use of painkillers.

Harvard researchers wrote in a summary of their project that former NFL players die on average about 20 years earlier than American men as a whole.

Dr. Lee Nadler, director of the project, tells The Boston Globe (http://bo.st/119eyjc) that Harvard will recruit a geographically, racially, and ethnically diverse pool of 1,000 retired players for the project.

Players' association President Domonique Foxworth says he hopes the project will spare former players the chronic pain he experiences.